This Meeting Will Be Successful If

Everybody complains about ineffective meetings; “This Meeting Will Be Successful If” is the simplest and best solution we use and recommend.

What’s This Meeting Will Be Successful If?

This is the simplest Blueprint we’ll ever publish. Because its power comes from its simplicity.

As the agenda for every meeting, we outline clearly, “This Meeting Will Be Successful If.”

That’s the whole framework: getting crisp on why we’re meeting and what success will look like to warrant the time investment. We learned it from longtime LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and his Chief of Staff, Brian Rumao, as it quickly became a staple of almost every LinkedIn meeting.

This Meeting Will Be Successful If can work with a short, small 1-on-1 meeting and equally well for a multi-day, larger group off-site. And it applies to agendas we send around ahead of time, as well as agendas we walk through to kick-off meetings.

Its power is in narrowing down to the focus areas(s) we need to execute on together.

Here’s a bit of Mayhall Magic to capture the idea:

And here are a few real examples from our history:

(1) PRODUCT REVIEW

From a LinkedIn product review with LinkedIn’s R&D Executive Team (”R&D Exec”) to propose launching a major new product:

This meeting will be successful if R&D Exec understands: 1. The pain points our [X] solution meets for members & companies + LinkedIn’s differentiators 2. When and how we plan to roll-out our [X] solution, the results we project, and potential risks

(2) TRAINING SESSION

Here’s an example I (James) just gave at a training I led on “Storytelling with Data” [BTW, And, But, Therefore Storytelling shares the first framework]:

Often, but not always, we’ll end a meeting and revisit this first page to check whether we’ve been successful today. Getting a full ✅ on every item doesn’t happen every time, but the success rate is much higher than when we don’t structure the conversation upfront.

When to Use This Meeting Will Be Successful If?

It works with any type of meeting and becomes increasingly essential as the size of the group increases. The greater the number of people, the greater the risk of somebody veering off course. A clear “This Meeting Will Be Successful If” not only lessens the risk of somebody derailing the meeting but also makes it easier to return to the subject at hand with a quick “That was fun; now, let’s get back to our two meeting goals.”

It often helps us determine whether this is an “Inform” meeting, an “Inquire,” an “Approve,” or a “Decide,” etc. Too many meetings fly off the rails because there isn’t a clear up-front goal, and suddenly 30 minutes or, worse, 60 minutes or more pass, and nothing has been achieved.

How do we use This Meeting Will Be Successful If?

James:

I’m confident this is the framework from LinkedIn that the greatest number of alums bring to their subsequent companies. Once anybody uses it and sees the impact, I think it just becomes part of their operating rhythm.

Because it's so easy to discover and incorporate, it can go “viral” quickly. At Speak, where I’m doing fractional work, I used it the first time I led a meeting, and quickly, I saw others following suit. I didn’t set out to have others adopt it; they just did because it’s one of those frameworks that screams out “A Better Way” to others who see it for the first time.

John:

Once you’re part of a well-run meeting operation. there’s no going back. Great operators have to have great meetings.

If you’re planning a meeting that feels more like an event (All-hands, offsite, kickoff), this question is just as relevant. A ProTip from friend and colleague Jason Everitt: when defining success for an event, specify what you want people to “Know, Feel, Do”.

James:

My biggest ProTip is ensuring our This Meeting Will Be Successful If gets as crisp as possible on what kind of meeting this is. We referenced “Inform” vs “Inquire” vs “Approve” vs “Decide” meetings in the “When” section above, each of which is a different meeting type and outcome. This Meeting Will Be Successful If helps clarify it. I’ve seen folks use those verbs as short-hand up-front; here’s a made-up example that makes it easy for any audience to understand:

This Meeting Will Be Successful If:

INFORM: we share the latest on X
APPROVE: we get sign-off to pursue Y

My other pro tip is 3 items max, with a preference for narrowing to 2 or even 1 vs expanding to 4 or even 5. It’s always good to remember that “priority” entered the English language in the 1400s as a singular term; it took until the 1900s for “priorities” to arrive. This singular vs plural distinction is helpful to apply to meetings: great meetings often get crisp on one area and then finish, instead of meandering across a range of topics.

Want to learn more?

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON LINKEDIN EXEC MEETING OPS?

Here’s Brian Rumao, VP and longtime Chief of Staff to LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, walking through the experience back in 2015:

How LinkedIn Execs Run Meetings

We’ve all been in conference rooms when a thought crosses our minds: What’s the point of this meeting? Why is this person talking so much? When will this end? Many folks feel like meetings are either a complete waste of time, or at best, a necessary evil. To make matters worse, the more senior you b

www.linkedin.com

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON MEETING EFFECTIVENESS OVERALL?

Judging by the number of “This Meeting Could Have Been An Email” mugs that are available to buy online, there’s a large appetite to improve meetings.

Josh Graff, the current Managing Director for Europe, The Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) at LinkedIn penned his thoughts, which include using “This Meeting Will Be Successful If”:

5 Tips To Boost Meeting Productivity

Here’s a few tips that I have tried over the last 12 months to make meetings more productive and successful. Send an agenda 48hrs in advance: This allows everyone to provide feedback.

www.linkedin.com

Here’s First Round Capital digging in, highlighting Karen Rohrer, currently Senior Director of Strategy & Operations at Twilio, who also uses “This Meeting Will Be Successful If”:

Take Your One on One Meeting to the Next Level With These 6 Tips for Managers

1:1s aren't just line-items on every manager's to-do list—it's critical to make sure these weekly meetings are as impactful and effective as possible. Here's a collection of tactical tips from the Review archives to help you take meetings with your direct reports to the next level.

review.firstround.com

Take Your One on One Meeting to the Next Level With These 6 Tips for Managers

And here’s Bain (James is a proud Bainie!) digging into the topic:

Your Scarcest Resource

Reprint: R1405D Most companies have elaborate procedures for managing capital. They require a compelling business case for any new capital investment. They set hurdle rates. They delegate authority carefully, prescribing spending limits for each level. An organization’s time, by contrast, goes largely unmanaged. Bain & Company, with which all three authors are associated, used innovative people analytics tools to examine the time budgets of 17 large corporations. It discovered that companies are awash in e-communications; meeting time has skyrocketed; real collaboration is limited; dysfunctional meeting behavior is on the rise; formal controls are rare; and the consequences of all this are few. The authors outline eight practices for managing organizational time. Among them are: Make meeting agendas clear and selective; create a zero-based time budget; require business cases for all initiatives; and standardize the decision process. Some forward-thinking companies bring as much discipline to their time budgets as to their capital budgets. As a result, they have liberated countless hours of previously unproductive time for executives and employees, fueling innovation and accelerating profitable growth.

hbr.org

Finally, in the “oldie but goodie” camp, here’s Harvard Business Review (HBR) from 1976; the world didn’t yet have email, Slack, GenAI, or either of us, but it already had ineffective meetings:

How to Run a Meeting

Why is it that any single meeting may be a waste of time, an irritant, or a barrier to the achievement of an organization’s objectives? The answer lies in the fact, as the author says, that “all sorts of human crosscurrents can sweep the discussion off course, and errors of psychology and technique on the chairman’s part can defeat its purposes.” This article offers guidelines on how to right things that go wrong in meetings. The discussion covers the functions of a meeting, the distinctions in size and type of meetings, ways to define the objectives, the preparations, the chairman’s role, and ways to conduct a meeting that will achieve its objectives.

hbr.org